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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Justice in an Islamic state was administered primarily by the kadis and their representatives, applying Islamic law, the sharia. In most Islamic states, including the Ottoman empire, there existed a number of special jurisdictions besides that of the kadis. The most significant of these were the jurisdictions of the various non-Muslim groups under Islamic rule, the dhimmis, applying their own, Christian or Jewish, religious laws. Apart from such jurisdictions limited to particular (religiously defined) groups, general jurisdictional powers lay in the hands of the Muslim head of state, such as the Sultan, who could delegate his jurisdictional powers to his representatives, the Grand Vizier or the kaymakam, his deputy in the capital.
1. The best general introduction, apart from the article ‘Kādī’ by E. Tyan and Gy. Kaldy-Nagy in EI2 , is still Tyan, E., Histoire de l’organization judiciaire en pays d’Islam (Leiden 1960)Google Scholar. For kadis in the Ottoman empire, their jurisdictional functions and organization see in particular Heyd, U., Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law, ed. Ménage, V.L. (Oxford 1973)Google Scholar; Majer, H.G., Vorstudien zur Geschichte der Ilmiye im Osmanisctfen Reich. I: Zu Usakîzade, seiner Familie und seinem Zeyl-i Sakayik (München 1978)Google Scholar; Jennings, R.C., ‘Kadi, court, and legal procedure in 17th c. Ottoman Kayseri’, Studia Islamica 48 (1978) 133–172 Google Scholar. A recent detailed study of the Ottoman kadi in the Balkans (in Bulgarian) is R. Gradeva, Kadijskata institucija na Balkanite XIV-XVII vek (Diss., Sofija 1988). For Egypt see El-Nahal, G.H., Judicial administration in Ottoman Egypt in the seventeenth century. A study based on the shari’a court registers (Diss., Chicago 1978).Google Scholar
2. For non-Muslims in Islamic states see art. ‘Dhimma’ (C. Cahen) in EI 2; Ye’or, B., The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (Cranbury, NJ 1985)Google Scholar; Braude, B. and Lewis, B. (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society, 2 vols (New York-London 1982).Google Scholar
3. Tyan, op.cit. 433-525. A detailed recent study of mazalim in Mamluk Egypt is Nielsen, J.S., Secular Justice in an Islamic State: Mazalim under the Bahrī Mamlūks, 662/1264 — 789/1387 (Istanbul 1985).Google Scholar
4. Heyd, op.cit. 1f., 198-204, 215.
5. ‘The main emphasis is placed on the protection of society, and not, as in the sharī’a, on safeguarding the rights of the individual. The kānūn is chiefly inspired not by principles of law and justice but, like the siyāsa, by the need to improve the administration and to safeguard public order.’ (Heyd, op.cit. 202). This Ottoman legislation of a comprehensive secular body of law is unprecedented in Islam. Individual law codes, including those arranged by provinces, are known as kanunname, cf. ‘kānūn-nāme’ (H. Inalcik) in EI 2; Lowry, H.W., ‘The Ottoman Liva Kanunnames contained in the Defter-i hakani’, Osmanli Arastirmalart 2 (1981) 43–74 Google Scholar. These, together with related tapu tahrir defterleri arranged by province, play a major role in modern historical research on the Ottoman empire. See Heywood, C., ‘Between historical myth and ‘mythohistory’: the limits of Ottoman history’, BMGS 12 (1988) 315–345.Google Scholar
6. For the ways in which Ottoman taxpayers brought their demands to the ears of the Sultan, and the reaction of the administration, see Faroqhi, S., ‘Political Activity Among Ottoman Taxpayers and the Problem of Sultanic Legitimation (1570-1650)’,; JESHO 35 (1992) 1–39 Google Scholar. There is documentary evidence that provincial diwans received arzuhals and kept records of the buyuruldu issued in dealing with them. The so-called skill No. 64 of the series Kadiski sidžili — Bitola in the State Archive of Macedonia in Skopje is in fact a kind of provincial sikayet defteri, dating from the end of the 18th century. A study of this important document is in preparation.
7. Heyd, op.cit. 227f.
8. H.G. Majer, Das osmanische “Registerbuch der Beschwerden” (Şikayet Defteri) vont Jahre 1675. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. mixt. 683. Herausgegeben, eingeleitet und mit siebzehn Fachkollegen gemeinsam übersetzt von Hans Georg Majer. Band I: Einleitung, Reproduktion des Textes, Geographische Indices (Wien 1984) 13-17.
9. Majer, op.cit. 23.
10. Non-Muslims figure regularly also in Ottoman sharia courts. Jennings, R.C., ‘Zimmis (non-Muslims) in early 17th century Ottoman judicial records. The sharia court of Anatolian Kayseri’, JESHO 21 (1978) 225–293 Google Scholar. The position of non-Muslims vis-à-vis Muslim religious courts in the early 18th century has been studied by Çiçek, K., Zimmis (non-Muslims) of Cyprus and the Sharia Law, 1110-39 H./1698-1726 (Diss., Birmingham 1992)Google Scholar. Cf.Jennings, R.C., ‘Limitations of the judicial powers of the kadi in 17th c. Ottoman Kayseri’, Studia Islamica 50 (1979) 151–184.Google Scholar
11. Majer, op.cit. 23. My figures, based on a re-count, are not always identical with those given in the Introduction.
12. Sir Paul Ricaut (Rycaut) was British Consul in Smyrna from 1667 till 1679. His account of Ottoman government, administration, religious life and military institutions is a valuable contemporary description largely based on otherwise unknown sources. SirRicaut, P., The history of the present state of the Otoman empire. Containing the maxims of the Turkish polity, the most material points of the Mahometan religion, their sects and heresies, their convents and religious votaries. Their military discipline, with an exact computation of their forces both by sea and by land (London 1686 [reprint Westmead 1972])Google Scholar. At the request of Charles II he devoted a separate volume to the situation of the Christian churches under Ottoman rule, The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches. Anno Christi, 1678 (London 1680).
13. Smith, T., De Graecae Ecclesiae hodierno statu epistola (London 1676) (English version An account of the Greek Church [Oxford 1680])Google Scholar. Smith, a Fellow of Magdalen College, spent the years 1668-70 in Constantinople, before he wrote his ‘frank but fairly sympathetic account of the Greek and Armenian churches’ : S. Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity. A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (Cambridge 19852) 292f.
14. On religious endowments in the Ottoman empire see Barnes, R.J., An Introduction into Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden 1986)Google Scholar; Yediyildiz, B., L’institution du waqf au XVIIIe siècle en Turquie (Diss., Paris 1975)Google Scholar; Jennings, R.C., ‘Pious Foundations in the Society and Economy of Ottoman Trabzon, 1565-1640. A Study Based on the Judicial Registers (ser’i mahkeme sicilleri) of Trabzon’, JESHO 33 (1990) 271–336 Google Scholar; Mutaftchieva, V., Le vakif — un aspect de la structure socio-économique de l’empire ottoman (XVe-XVIIes.) (Sofia 1981)Google Scholar. The principles concerning the establishment of Christian ‘vakfs’ are given in Fattal, A., Le statut légal des non-musulmans en pays d’Islam (Beirut 1958) 143f.Google Scholar
15. The development of mukataa is discussed in Inalcik, H., ‘Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1700’, Inalcik, H., Studies in Ottoman Social and Economic History (London 1985) chapter V (see especially 327–333).Google Scholar
16. Krüger, H., Fetwa und Siyar. Zur internationalrechtlichen Gutachtenpraxis der osmanischen Şeyh ül-Islâm vom 17. bis 19. Jahrhundert unter besonderer Berück-sichtigung des “Behcet ül-Fetâvâ” (Wiesbaden 1978).Google Scholar
17. Repp, R.C., The Mufti of Istanbul. A Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London 1986).Google Scholar
18. Abbreviated as Vd 37b/3.
19. Majer, op.cit. 16, 22.
20. Makarios III, his predecessor, had died in 1672 after a visit to Moscow in 1669. He is said to have ‘toasted the Pope as his Holy Father at a dinner at the French Consulate at Damascus’ late in 1662. Runciman, op.cit. 234.
21. In 1675, the acting patriarch of the Serbs was Arsenij, referred to as such in the şikayet defteri (Vd 202a/l). I was unable to establish the identity of Ovakim (?Ioacheim), but a reading error can be ruled out: ain — vav — elif — kaf — mim in both entries. On the Serb Orthodox church towards the middle of the 17th century see the important contribution (in Serbian) on the basis of Ottoman sources of Tričković, R., ‘Srpska crkva sredinom XVII veka’, Glas CCCXX Srpske akademije nauka i umetnosti. Oddelenje istorijskih nauka 2 (1980) 61–164 Google Scholar, 7 tables, 1 map.
22. Both entries are dated evail-i Cumazi II 1086/23 August-1 September 1675.
23. The most comprehensive study of the contributions due to the Orthodox church in the Ottoman empire and its fiscal obligations towards the Ottoman treasury is Kabrda, J., Le système fiscal de l’église orthodoxe dans l’empire ottoman (Brno 1969).Google Scholar
24. This is not the accession fee under the same name which metropolitan and episcopal sees under the patriarchate of Constantinople paid into the Treasury. For a list of the amounts due to the Treasury from each bishopric for the period 1641-1651 see Inalcik, H., ‘Ottoman Archival Materials on Millets ’, Braude/Lewis, Christians and Jews (as in n.2) I 437–449, especially 441–448.Google Scholar
25. Kabrda, op.cit. 61-65.
26. Kabrda, op.cit. 75-77.
27. Kabrda, op.cit. 72f. ‘aumônes’.
28. Crete had only recently come under Ottoman control again. It is therefore not included in the peskeş-list given by Inalcik (see n. 24).
29. Dated evail-i Muharrem 1086/28 March-6 April 1675.
30. A modern general account of Ottoman fiscal and administrative practices, together with the relevant terminology, is found in Mantran, R. (ed.), Histoire de l’empire ottoman (Paris 1989)Google Scholar. Of particular importance are chapters VI (by G. Veinstein), VII (by R. Mantran) and IX (by G. Veinstein), covering the 16th and 17th centuries.
31. Dated evahir-i Zilhicce 1085/18-27 March 1675.
32. Dated evail-i Muharrem 1086/28 Mach-6 April 1675.
33. Dated evahir-i Sqfer 1086/17-26 May 1675. According to the sharia, a kadi’s sentence was final, and no appeal could normally be made against it, except by special order of the Sultan. The principle of mazalim allowed certain forms of appeal against the sentence of a kadi, particularly if he had not been instructed on the case directly by the Chief kadi in Istanbul. Heyd, op.cit. 257f.
34. Dated evahir-i Cumazi II 1086/12-21 September 1675.
